Saturday was Tamales day! Hurrah I hear you cry! (what the …….. is that?!). Both Laura and Catherine (my new best friends) were away for the weekend, so I had planned to go horseriding to the waterfall on Saturday. However, the house became a hive of activity with various female friends turning up with industrial sized cooking pots, firewood, plantain leaves cut into squares, string and sundry other mysterious items. Sonia was busy boiling pork in the kitchen and cooking enough rice to feed half of China because once a year, friends get together to make and eat Tamales. Great! I thought, a party! So I postponed my horseriding plans to help out. Now making Tamales is not a five minute process, first you have to boil the pork and make a whole heap of rice; then you have to cut small pieces of red pepper, carrot, green beans and coriander. You then make your fire, put an enormous cooking pot on top, fill it with water and maize and stir that till it boils, whilst adding copious quantities of pigfat and salsa sauce. This eventually thickens to the consistency of rice pudding. That part of the process takes about 2 hours. The next bit is to assemble your Tamales. First take your plantain leaf and cut to roughly a 8″ by 8″ square, put a dollop of maize mixture on the leaf and then add on top the rice, a chunk of pork, piece of carrot, pepper, coriander and a bean. Fold the leaf to make a parcel and tie with string. Make about 200. Go out of your mind with boredom. Put about 20 into water in the pot on the fire. Wait 45 minutes. Wish you had gone horseriding instead. Cook the next batch. Be astounded at the tedium of it all. And so it went on all afternoon and on and on and on. What kept me going was the thought that when it was finished, we´d crack open a few beers and eat the tasty, hot Tamales. NO!!! We finished, the friends left, I waited about 2 hours and then we had the Tamales for tea. It was very exciting eating something from a leaf and in fact that part was the best bit. Any of you who are tempted to recreate this culinary experience at home, take my advice – DON´T – unless you are fond of cold, congealed, globby, maize. The Tamales were truly revolting. Vile even. I was soooooo disappointed and not even a beer to wash them down with. The day ended in fitting style with me tucked up in bed by 9.30pm as there was nothing else to do!!
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Preparation
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Ready to eat ……
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The finished article
Go Granada! 